This is episode 1,878 of the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Meckley and I welcome you back to day four of our series to detox stress.

This is midweek in our series and how are you doing? If you are just joining us,

you are in the right place. You can go back and listen to some of the previous episodes,

but each episode is unique. You discover a different meditation technique in each episode,

and each technique is customized to our weekly theme.

The themes change out every week.

As I mentioned, this week is all about a stress detox.

And as you settle yourself down and get ready to meditate today, or you might be out walking, doing errands, working as you listen to this episode, it's all good.

Because the techniques can be done, whether you are seated meditating or right in the midst of your busy day.

Your technique today has to do with how your brain manages stress.

So I thought I'd share a little with you about how all this stress happens in the first place and how you can go about

detoxing the stress you may be experiencing or at least managing the stress in a better way

which makes a huge difference in your life. When you experience stress, your sympathetic nervous system lights up.

It's often referred to as your fight or flight response.

And as I've shared in previous episodes, one way to help you manage your fight or flight response

before you even get to that state is by managing your breath.

And I shared a breathing technique with you in a previous episode.

And when you can catch yourself beginning to spiral into an emotion that takes you down,

you will notice that you begin to experience anxiety and stress and your heart rate speeds up.

Well, if you can catch yourself at this point by using your breath, it will greatly help you manage the stress.

There is a threshold that's considered to be 100 beats per minute.

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